Benjamin Franklin and the Secret of the Storm

The clouds rolled in low and dark over Philadelphia. Thunder rumbled like a giant turning over in his sleep. Most people ran inside and bolted their doors. But one man stood at his window and smiled. Benjamin Franklin was not like most people. Ben was fifty years old that summer of 1752, but his eyes still sparkled like a boy's. He had been thinking about lightning for a very long time. People were afraid of it. Churches caught fire. Ships burned at sea. Families lost their homes in a single terrible flash. Ben believed lightning was not magic or punishment. He believed it was electricity, and electricity could be understood. He turned to his son William, who was twenty-one years old and stood by the fireplace. "Get your coat," Ben said. "We have work to do." William looked at the window. Rain had begun to streak the glass. "Father, you want to go out in that?" Ben held up a kite he had built himself. The frame was two thin cedar sticks crossed together. The sail was a large silk handkerchief. A long hemp string hung from the bottom, and tied to the very end of that string was a brass key. An iron wire ran from the top of the kite up to a sharp metal point. "The storm is exactly what we need," Ben said simply. They walked to an open field near a old cow shed. The rain fell cold and steady. Ben handed the kite to William, and William ran with it until the wind caught it and pulled it high, high into the angry sky. Ben held the string and stood in the doorway of the shed, keeping the lower end of the hemp dry in his hand. They waited. The kite danced and dipped in the dark clouds above. Nothing happened for a long while. Ben watched. He did not give up. Good scientists never gave up just because something took time. Then Ben felt it. The loose threads on the hemp string slowly stood straight up, as if an invisible hand were lifting every single one. His heart leapt. He moved his knuckle toward the brass key. Crack. A tiny spark jumped from the key to his hand. It stung. It startled him. And it was the most wonderful thing he had ever felt in his life. Lightning was electricity. He had proved it. William whooped from across the field. Even through the rain, Ben could see his son's wide grin. Ben laughed out loud, a warm, rolling laugh that the wind seemed to carry up into the storm itself. That night, soaked and shivering but deeply happy, Ben sat by the fire and wrote down every detail of what had happened. He had already been working on a new invention — a pointed iron rod that could be fixed to the roof of a house. If lightning was electricity, and electricity traveled through metal, then the rod would guide the lightning safely down into the ground. No more fires. No more lost homes. He called it the lightning rod, and within a few years, people all across the colonies were putting them on their barns and churches and ships. Ben never asked for money for the idea. He gave it away freely, because that was who he was. He believed that knowledge belonged to everyone, and that one curious person willing to stand in the rain could make the whole world a little safer. Years later, when people asked young children about the greatest Americans who had ever lived, the name Benjamin Franklin always came up. Not just because of the kite. Because of what the kite meant. It meant that when everyone else ran from the storm, one brave, curious man looked at it and asked, why? And then he went and found out. Sleep well tonight, safe and warm, with the lights on inside.